Four miles in the morning before it gets too hot has been working out for us most days. Recently, we traded our weekday neighborhood route for the prairie trail. Why we didn’t do this sooner remains a mystery, but we’re glad for the prettier and joint-friendlier walk. On the weekends, we head to the state park or one of the county conservation areas.
The rest of my summer has centered on reading and study, yard work and gardening (our “pollinator pockets” have proven quite successful), and preparation for the upcoming recital (yes, live and in-person — I’ll be playing the Allegro molto from Schubert’s Sonatina in D Major).
The band my husband and I joined earlier this year performed its spring concert. What a lot of fun! The flute section recently decided to form a small performance group, so in addition to the weekly rehearsals for band, I’m now practicing with the flute choir.
Our “pollinator pockets,” which we finished planting over Mother’s Day weekend, suffered a bit in last week’s heat wave, but we were able to protect them with a canopy and extra watering.
All of the plants for the “pollinator pockets” I’m planning for the two raised beds we prepared last month are crowded into three-season room. It’s a beautiful mess — and hell on my allergies. “They” say that the last frost is behind us, and the warming trend begins this weekend, so I hope to plant early Sunday morning. In the meantime, I’ve mulched the other beds, repaired the borders, tidied the patio, readied the containers for perennials, repaired a few bare-ish lawn patches, removed all the feeders, and, yes, already mowed. Twice. (Hey, when you keep the grass a little longer, it’s critical to keep it tidy.)
And now that I’ve typed this, I realize I’ve procrastinated long enough. It’s time to practice my music. Our concert date approaches, as do this semester’s final three private lessons.
On Thursday, we attended Art in Bloom at the Milwaukee Art Museum. If you read me regularly, you probably know how much I admire Anselm Kiefer’s painting, “Midgard.” The arrangement inspired by that painting easily secured my “people’s choice” vote.
My commitment to annotating my reading list has waned primarily because enough note-taking, peripheral reading and studying, and discussion occurs in the assorted groups in which I am participating that I feel as if I’ve said what I need to say. Of course, I haven’t said it here, but music practice (1), band rehearsal (2), planning raised beds for pollinators, backyard birding (3), plus studying and reading have all conspired to keep me off the computer (except when I’m in Zoom meetings). We’ll see if I can remedy that.
__________________________________
(1) My current solo piece is (still) Howard Ferguson’s Three Sketches for Flute and Piano. I’m also working on No. 15 of 18 Studies for Flute by Joachim Anderson, Op. 41, in Robert Cavally’s Melodious and Progressive Studies from Andersen, Gariboldi, Koehler, and Terschak for Flute, Book 1, and Sonata No. V (Handel) in Selected Duets for Flute, Volume II (Advanced), as well as scales, rhythmical articulation, and music for the spring concert.
(2) Yes, we joined a band of adult amateurs, who range from late beginner to early-advanced. During the 1.25-hour commute there and back, we’ve been listening to The Great Courses (TGC) on Dante’s Divine Comedy, which I’m reading for 100 Days of Dante. We’ve also been sampling TGC lectures on the bible. Neither of us has read it, cover to cover, so to address this educational gap, we’re using a reading schedule we found online, (usually) doubling the daily commitment, so that we finish this summer.
(3) For the last week or so, we’ve had a tiny flock of Common Redpolls at our feeders, a first in the eleven years at the forever home. This article shed some light on what may be going on. (Is it too much to ask that some of the sandhill cranes we’ve espied in the neighborhood stopped in our yards?)
